"Free" Enterprise

"No man is an island, entire of itself." -- John Donne

   One of the guidelines of conservative politics is that businesses should be left alone and that "market forces" will restrain them from doing things that are harmful to the country and its population. Over time, and "in the long run," free market forces will rebalance the economy and everything connected to it, so everyone will be better off.
   History shows otherwise.

   Comes now a report that the federal government is about to relax its environmental protection regulations and leave it up to individual states to decide how and whether coal operations, for example, should minimize their emissions.
   This might be okay if whatever comes out of smokestacks went straight up and continued straight up into the stratosphere and never came down.    Except that doesn't happen. All prevailing winds and weather systems travel generally from west to east, so that toxic emissions from a coal fired power plant in Philadelphia, for example, will travel eastward and come back to earth in Camden and other parts of southern New Jersey.
   Or if detritus dumped into the Mississippi River in Kansas City stayed there, and did not travel downstream to New Orleans. Or if garbage dumped into New York Harbor did not float over to the coast of New Jersey.
   In short, environmental protection cannot be solely a local or even a state issue. It must be federal, since what happens in one state can affect the residents of other states.
   Moreover, the same principal applies internationally, so cooperation among countries is also essential to deal with environment problems.
   Example: Britain generated electricity using coal for many years, but the air pollution and acid rain destroyed forests in Norway. The British defense was that Norway was too far away to be affected. However, once Britain reduced or eliminated the offending polluters, forests in Norway are doing much better.
   There are still some folks, of course, who are in denial that environmental pollution exists at all, and whatever issues there are can be dealt with locally.
   That seems to be the attitude of the current administration in Washington, as it moves to eliminate whatever environment regulations are in place. "Whatever happens downstream doesn't affect me," goes the thinking, "so I don't care."
   Except that we are all "downstream" from someone else, and unless we work together, we will all suffer.

   "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
   "If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were.
  "Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.
  "And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." -- John Donne